My name is Sue and my husband is Tim. We started dating in May 2000, and were married August of 2004. We have a strong, solid and loving marriage. We are a very active couple who enjoy skiing,fishing,golf and going to baseball games together. We love to take vacation together in mid January every year to see new tropical places. We are now on our journey to adopt and we would like to share our journey and progress with you.

About Me

I am 28 years old and my husband is 30 years old and we cannot wait to hear from an expecting mother or even a mother that can't make ends meet and wants a better life for her child. I always talk about that happy day that I get the news that I will be adopting a child. I can't wait to be part of bake sales and going to there halloween or christmas party at school or even go on there field trips. I will probably have 100 pictures of there first day of school and that day they graduate. I always dreamed of being a young parent. But what we dream and what comes true does not always go as plan but they say everything happens for a reason. I just want to be able to keep up with a child so if they want to be in dance or baseball that I can drive them here and there and be there all the time cheering them on the side lines. We tried all the infertility and invetro stuff and it didn't work and that is okay we are past that. We have our homestudy completed and working with a license agency. I am just excited to start a family. This is were are journey is leading us and I can't wait to see how my life will unfold in front of me.

Friday, May 29, 2009

Sorry it has been so long

So sorry it has been so long since I posted. Hope you didn't think I feel of the planet. Not much has gone on. I have talked to DHS (Department of Human Services), they deal with foster care and also adoption. I don't know were I am at, at this point. I go on websites and see all these children that are waiting for parents but the children at 4 and older. I always said infant, infant but I think that is because when you go through infertility all you think of is infants I don't feel like I have really thought about older children until just recently. I am not saying older like a 12 year old or anything like that but older than an infant. I have talked to people and everyone has mixed feelings. DHS is in every state and every county. You will not believe what they charge for adoptions through them. They charge $160 for legal fee and $40 for birth certificate. When I heard that I almost feel off my chair. If you have read my blog you know that I don't quit. I keep trying to find out different ways to get the word out and get our info in as many places and use as many outlets as I can. I talked to my agency and they stated that they can keep us on the list as we transfer our foster license to DHS. Which is pretty cool because then we are on both lists and if our agency get a baby for us we just need to transfer the license back. For those of you new to adoption the foster license is so you can take the baby from the hospital with out the child going into foster care then when the adoption is finalised you would get the child. The foster license allows us to foster the baby until the adoption is finalised. Also I talked to an adoption lawyer and he has a free list for adoption that he put us on. If interested you should check in your state. I went in the yellow pages and looked under lawyer and then looked under adoption lawyer. There are family law lawyers but they deal a lot with adoption within a family like a step mom or dad adopting. So you can call an adoption lawyer in your state and see if they have a free list you can go on. Of course to warn and let you know if you missed it, it of course is free because you would have to pay the lawyer to finalize and do your adoption versus your agency. I know more money that is what I said but he said it shouldn't be any more than $5,000 and he said that is on the high end if it was a hard adoption. So of course I said why not another list to be on. The list he has is due to him working with pregnancy crisis centers that refer pregnant women to there firm when they wish to make an adoption plan. I had to give the lawyer 5 copies of our profile to hand out and I had to fill out information on what type of baby we were willing to take and info about us. Stuff like that so you might want to look into that in your area. I stumbled across that one. If you do also decide to talk to DHS in your area about possible adopting from them I should warn you there are some questions you should first ask. I just know that from this Memorial day my brother in-laws friend Jen use to be a social worker for DHS in Chicago. She is now a pharmacy rep but she gave me a lot of pointers to ask because every state is different and she didn't know the laws in Michigan. She said to ask how many adoptions do they do a month and how many of those adoptions are kin-ship adoption (meaning relatives, family members adopting). The second ask how they get baby's to be adopted out of there facility because usually when a birth mom goes to DHS it is because she is not willing to give up her parental rights. Another question was if I wanted to try to adopt over the age of 2 years old can I be put on the foster care list to only foster children that parental rights were terminated. I have thought about foster care but my husband is defiantly opposed so I decided not to go through with fostering. He says he doesn't want to be mean but he would put a wall up so he didn't get hurt when they left. I have to admit I think I would be really upset I just wanted to help the child and put a smile on there faces but if Tim is not in I can't move along I want us to both be on the same page but he did agree to fostering a child that parental rights were terminated. Jen said from her experience that over the age of two the children if in the system have issue's and I knew that but she says to first foster to see if you can handle it. She said that the first 2-3 months the children are just wanting to please you then after that they will start to revert back to old behaviors and maybe hit and start wetting the bed and yelling and she said to try it out to make sure it is a good fit. When called DHS they said that they get the new Born's from when parents rights have been terminated already from the other children and they keep getting pregnant. She said they do 75-100 adoptions in a month and 40-50% are kin-ship adoptions. She said that if we only want to foster a child that rights have been terminated she can do that. She said when you foster a child you can ask for what ever you want to watch or can handle. So that is some info that I have got. I figured I would share with you in case you may be interested. That means we would be on 3 different lists which I figure will increase our chances of adopting. I hope this helps. If not that is what is going on with me and what I have found. I am existed and hope it works. Thanks for listening and until next time. Talk to you all soon.